Abstract
Ring shake is a wood defect that occurs very frequently in sweet chestnut
(Castanea sativa Mill.). By examining this particular kind of wood failure it is
apparent that, at an anatomical level, separations occurring in the wood tissue
show different features. In order to collect further information to help in
understanding the causes that lead to the development of ring shake, a microscopic
description and a quantification of these different ring shake typologies has been
performed on 45 chestnut wood discs. Results showed that among the various shake types
encountered, the crack-form, i.e. the failure that develops across the earlywood
cell walls, is largely the most frequent and is principally found in fresh felled wood.
Detailed observations reinforce the belief that the set off mechanism leading to
crack-failure is related to the combined interaction of the structural weakness
of chestnut wood with growth stresses developed in the stem.